Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #162

A HOUSE OF GOLD AND STEEL

by Marissa Lingen

My grandmother and I went into the almshouse together

when I was seven. I was a sturdy little thing, hardy enough to
survive the consumption that had taken the rest of the family,

and Gran was a hale old lady. But she had no property to speak
of, and there wasn’t a lot she was allowed to do to support

herself as a widow, so into the almshouse we went.

We survived. That’s about all I can say of those years: we

stayed together, and we survived. There was a lot of jute and a
lot of gruel. And soon I got old enough to begin going to hiring

fairs, to piece together work here and there—not yet enough to
rent us a room in a boarding house, but soon, we said, soon.

When I was fifteen, I got a call to be a lady’s maid. “There

must be a mistake,” I told the woman who ran the hiring fair. “I

can’t dress hair, and my hands are—” I flushed and twisted my
hands in my dress. They were rough and gnarled from the jute.

“I’m not a lady’s maid. You mean scullery.”

She shrugged. “Not my problem. They want a strong,

hearty young lady’s maid from the workhouse girls. Sort it out
when you get there.”

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I only had one dress, so there was no question of wearing

my finest in case it would convince them to keep me as a lady’s

maid. I rebraided my hair to look as tidy as possible, and off I
went.

The house that had summoned me was grand enough that

there was a servants’ entrance and large enough that the boy

who answered its door had no idea who I was or why I was
there. I felt sure that as soon as I found the housekeeper, I’d

hear why it was all a mistake and be out on my ear, with a few
idle hours to show for it.

Instead, the housekeeper looked me up and down and

huffed out a sigh, blowing the wisps of hair that had come loose

from her bun up in the air. As they settled back around her
face, she said, “Well, you’ll do, but we’ll have to find you

something else to wear, without delay. I can’t have you seeing
the Mistress in that.”

So they bundled me into one of the housemaid’s spares,

with a promise to replace it rather than make her take it back

from me, and shuffled me off upstairs. I hoped that the
Mistress wouldn’t look at my holed boots or my unwashed cap.

For myself, I was too busy gaping at the finery around me to
pay much attention to what the dress looked like. Belowstairs

was serviceable and warm, far better than anything I was used

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to, with threadbare castoff carpets and even some ornaments
on the tables.

Upstairs was beyond my ability to describe, except that

everything I looked at either glistened or invited the touch of

cleaner fingers than mine to glory in its softness. I had not ever
imagined a world like I saw upstairs. The housekeeper, a gruff

woman who seemed to keep things running with the tiniest
glances, was kind as she hustled me along to the Mistress. I

think she knew what it was like to come the way I had. Maybe
she’d come up that way herself.

The Mistress was a tall, bony woman in a dress with more

lace than I had ever seen. Whatever had been done with her

hair had ten loops at least and looked like something I would
have to have three assistants and four days to even try to

reproduce. I was even more certain that this had all been a
mistake. But she looked me up and down and said, “Yes, fine,

all right. Let’s go introduce you.”

And then I saw how it was not a mistake that they had

called me for the lady’s maid position, not a mistake at all.

The young lady in question lay in her bed with her eyes

closed. It took me only a moment—I had lived around enough
consumptives to know—to see that she had not been out of that

bed on her own in quite some time. Possibly could not. So
when they said lady’s maid, they really meant nurse. They

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meant that I was to manhandle her body about and wipe her
arse and make sure she didn’t get weeping sores, and clean

them if she did.

Well. It wasn’t as though I was too good for it.

“Can you?” said the Mistress sharply.
I nodded.

“Do you speak, girl? Because you’ll be wanted to speak to

her some. Gently. In case she can still hear.”

“Does she—” I coughed, wanted to spit but swallowed it

instead. I could see this was not a place to spit on the floors.

“Does she wake?”

“No, not so you can see. I want you to talk to her so she

hears a human voice. We come in and talk to her, her brothers
and me. But more is better.” The Mistress peered at me. “We’d

better do something about that cough. Can’t have you
breathing it into her.”

And she touched my forehead, and there was a swift

burning in my lungs and throat, and then it was gone. I’d lived

with the consumption for at least eight years, likely more. It
had weakened my Gran and killed the rest of my kin. And now

it was just gone, like she would have wiped smuts off my face.
Easier than that, even.

And I wanted to fly at her and kill her, because if she could

do it that easily, why wasn’t she doing it all the time? Why

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didn’t she come to the almshouse and cure us all? Why didn’t
she cure my Gran?

But if she had the magic to clear me of the consumption,

she could fight me off with barely a lifted finger. My kicking,

spitting rage would die against her, and take my chances at the
job with it.

I took a deep, ragged breath. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t

make the Mistress be good. I could just take her money and try

to pay for a healer for my Gran myself.

“Right then,” she said briskly. “That’s taken care of.

Dabrowski will show you where everything is and acquaint you
with Miss Aneta’s routine. She’ll also give you an advance on

your first week’s wages to get yourself some suitable clothes. Be
here at dawn each day. We make an early start here.”

“Yes, Mistress,” I said, and bowed my head and made as if

to follow her out. She looked at me as though I was insane.

“Wait here. Dabrowski will return. Your work starts now.”
Dabrowski, it turned out, was the housekeeper who had

gotten me the maid’s dress. She walked me through the
invalid’s routines—when to bathe her limbs with infusions and

when to anoint them with oils, how to hold and turn them, how
to feed her the thin gruel that kept her alive.

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Like a fool, I made reference to the story of the sleeping

princess with the hedge of thorns surrounding her, even

though Miss Aneta was no beauty.

Dabrowski snorted. “It’s not magic that keeps her asleep,

little idiot. It’s magic that keeps her alive. Because it’s her
magic they need.”

“What—what do you mean?” I had assumed that the

Mistress kept Miss Aneta alive because she was her daughter,

and I said so.

“Oh, certainly the Mistress would do her best for an

untalented daughter,” said Dabrowski. “At least, I would hope
she would. But in addition, the young Miss, bless her, was the

best transmuting talent of her time. Before she grew ill, that is.”

“What’s wrong with her? Is it—” I swallowed. “Is it

catching?”

Dabrowski grinned. “Not as I’ve ever heard. It’s a disease

in her magic, and that’s not likely to be a problem for you and
me. And the Mistress is mucking around with Miss Aneta’s

talents every time you blink, so... whatever’s wrong with her
magic, I’d say, no, it’s not catching.”

I worked the whole day and went back to the almshouse—

to my shame, I had started thinking of it as home—with money

in my pocket. It was enough money that I could buy a hot
baked apple to split with Gran to eat just for the joy of it and

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still have enough to give to Gran for her to find us a new place
the next day while I was working. Enough that she would be

warm too, when I was gone to the big, bright, warm house.

“So you’ll mostly work with this Dabrowski?” said Gran as

we huddled together under our one blanket that first night of
my new position.

“I expect with the maids, and maybe some with

Dabrowski, and occasionally the Mistress,” I said. “Miss Aneta

won’t give me much to chatter about, poor thing.”

Gran put a finger beside her nose. “Look sharp, Kasia. You

may be surprised.”

In fact I was surprised. I was constantly surprised for

weeks after I started working there. Every time I thought I
understood how far the luxuries of rich folk could go, I would

stumble upon something more—indoor plumbing was a marvel
to me in the servants’ quarters, where the basins and seats

were plain white porcelain. The first time I saw the masters’
version, I could hardly recognize it for what it was.

And that was only the beginning. Everywhere I turned,

there were ornaments made of dazzling gold. If I had been a

housemaid, I would have discovered from their weight when I
dusted them that they were not merely gilded, but it took me

longer to find out since I had no reason to heft them, and

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longer still to realize that not all rich people had a treasure
trove spread around them in the form of gewgaws.

More curious still were the self-propelled devices I had

never heard of that were assisting the household with their

work, from the Mistress herself down to the lowest bootboy.
Most were made of brushed steel, and they swept the carpets

and refilled the inkstands and performed tasks I could not
entirely identify.

They did nothing to help with Miss Aneta.
That work was mine and mine alone. I changed her

position on the bed, massaged her limbs to keep the blood flow
high, fed her, bathed her, changed the swaddling cloths that

only courtesy kept me from calling her nappies, changed the
delicate nightclothes she wore above them.

Miss Aneta’s room was filled with the things she had loved

before she had fallen ill, and the maids kept them from growing

dusty, in case she awakened to want them: tidy folders of
music, tied shut with ribbons in shades of blue; lutes in three

sizes, all kept tuned and oiled and strung but played only to
check that they were still in tune; shelves with the sorts of

knickknacks a much younger girl would have loved, horses and
shepherdesses and tiny perfect sheep, things that you would

ordinarily see in wood or porcelain, but each had been turned
to solid gold.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #162

The boarding house where we moved was threadbare

compared to my new place of employment, but it kept my Gran

warm, and as her hands healed she could do more delicate
piecework without the cloth catching on her calluses. The

woman who kept the boarding house was hearty and kind—
rather like Dabrowski, though not in such exalted

surroundings. She was called Mrs. Kaczmarek, and she let Gran
sit by the parlor fire in the second-best chair all day long as she

worked. I loved her for that.

When I had started my work in the employ of the Mistress,

I had little notion of what a transmuting talent meant. The
magical toffs who ruled our city had taken little interest in me,

and I returned the favor. I had been caring for Miss Aneta for a
fortnight when the Mistress first interrupted me with visitors.

I had not expected visitors at all, but if I had, I would have

expected ladies of the Mistress’s class, possibly Miss Aneta’s

own age, who would sit by the bedside and chat in hushed
voices or possibly sing, who would bring flowers Miss Aneta

would never see, and who would leave after a decorous amount
of time.

I would not have predicted a trio of pinch-faced whey-

colored men and a woman who could easily have been their

sister, dressed in the fashions of the moment or possibly the
next moment—brilliantly dyed waistcoats for the gentlemen

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and an improbable lozenge-shaped hat for the lady. I would not
have expected the Mistress to fling the door wide and proclaim,

“Well, there she is.” When she did so, I started and half-
thought, for a moment, that she meant me. I dropped a curtsey

quickly enough to avert any kind of wrath for my cheek, and I
waited.

“Oh, Kasia,” said the Mistress. “These are—some of my

colleagues.” Her face curdled when she said it. I had the first

inkling that something in the world might not be fully to the
Mistress’s liking. “They are here to examine my daughter.

Please assist them as needed.”

I bobbed again, like an apple core on a choppy sea. She did

not leave as I expected, having delivered such comprehensive
orders. Instead she stood in the doorway while one of the

gentlemen and the lady seated themselves in the straight-
backed chairs that we kept by the bedside and started poking

and prodding my charge.

“May I... assist you?” I offered.

“I believe we have the matter well in hand,” said one of the

gentlemen who remained away from the bedside. And sure

enough, the lady took Miss Aneta’s hands in her own and
closed her eyes, taking the sort of deep breaths I was used to

seeing from strong men about to lift something improbably

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heavy. I realized after a moment that her breaths and Miss
Aneta’s were falling into rhythm.

The lady nodded once, and one of the gentlemen reached

around her to place an object in her lap. Her dress sagged

under the weight of it, and I realized that it was a brick. She
breathed with Miss Aneta, and then, still holding her hands,

she began to hum different pitches on her outgoing breaths.
Her voice wasn’t any great shakes—I knew half a dozen people

at the workhouse who sang better than her—but the air got
prickly and still, like the height of summer when no breezes

blow.

And then she let go, and the brick in her lap plummeted ,

ripping her dress as it fell between her knees with a great
thump to the floor. I let out a gasp, because that dress could

have fed me and my Gran for months, but the lady just reached
down and picked up the brick with both hands, rising to her

feet as though her torn dress made no difference in the world.

The brick was now solid gold.

When Dabrowski said Miss Aneta had the best

transmuting talent of her time, I’d had no idea what that

meant. We didn’t see a lot of that sort of thing in the
workhouses and the slums, for obvious reasons. The Mistress

returned in and saw the lady holding the gold brick. She said,

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grimly, “Well, I suppose you have what you came for, and you
can leave us in peace?”

“For now,” said the lady. The gentlemen surrounded her—I

suppose that was what they were there for—and swept her out

past the Mistress like they were afraid the Mistress would soil
them.

Like she was some servant girl.
“Mistress, what—”

“She’ll be hungry, after that,” she said, as though I had not

spoken. “You’ll want to feed her early, or she’ll fuss.”

I had never seen Miss Aneta fuss, never heard a peep out

of her. The Mistress didn’t even cross the room to look at her

face, to see that she was all right. I touched Miss Aneta’s cheek.
It was like she’d been sitting too close to the fire. I got her gruel

into her, though she thrashed and tossed like a child.

I sang to her, tentatively, and she quieted down for that.

After that I could tell when I arrived in the mornings when

her mother had done the same with her the night before. The

ravenous mornings, the restless mornings: those were the
mornings when the Mistress had used the transmutation power

for her own needs.

I once tried to ask, “Ma’am, have you ever tried to—”

“Tried to what?”
“Tried to transmute her into healthy?”

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“What a ridiculous thing to say. Don’t get above yourself,

girl. Go warm some more stones for Miss Aneta’s bed.”

“Yes’m.” I fled, feeling foolish, and did not speak to the

Mistress about it again.

Every few weeks, the Mistress allowed others to come in

and use her daughter as a living transmutation machine.

Mostly the whey-faced group did, although it was clear that the
Mistress had some serious distaste for them and they for her.

The longer I worked there, the more comfortable the Mistress
became with me. The more I became a piece of furniture. After

a few months, she even began to allow me to be present, to
hold things and in minor, unobtrusive ways assist when she

used Miss Aneta’s transmutation powers. I began to see where
all the golden decorative objects and steel automated devices

around the house had come from, and how the Mistress could
afford to hire more servants and purchase more luxuries all the

time.

Dabrowski saw how I didn’t like it, and every time I had to

do it I found that there was mysteriously a cake for me in the
kitchen, or my coat had been brushed, or some other small

kindness to let me know that someone was paying attention,
that someone cared.

“Dabrowski—” I said to her once.

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“Funny world,” was all she would say. “Funny world for

my young mistress and me. Funny world for us all.”

I looked at her hard, but my gran was waiting, so I nodded

and put my freshly brushed coat on.

“I heard you ask,” said Dabrowski. “About healing my

young mistress. It was kind of you to ask.”

I ducked my head and said, “Well, it came to naught,

didn’t it.”

“It was kind to ask,” Dabrowski repeated. And then she

was off after one of the steel automated devices, which was

supposed to be sewing seams on a sheet and instead was
pursuing a shrieking bootblack, sewing the sheet to his coat.

Dabrowski managed to get the device working again, but the
moment had passed.

The whey-faced people were there the first time I realized I

could use the powers myself. Miss Aneta had twitched and

moaned at the wrong moment and ruined the attempt at
transmutation, though all that meant was that it came to

nothing, the brick lying red and sullen in the lady’s skirts.
“Hold her, girl, what are you here for?” snapped the lady

impatiently.

I did not like to bind Miss Aneta like a prisoner to perform

for them, and yet I felt that it would go poorly for me if I let her
thrash and ruin their transmutation when the Mistress had

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allowed them in. So I came around behind Miss Aneta and took
her by the forearms, bracing her shoulders with my elbows.

For the first time I saw and felt clearly just how they

moved, just how they acted, and how she responded... how the

breath went in and then out again, and the spark... oh, I can’t
explain it, I can only show it, and when I’ve finished showing it

now I have a silver pigeon feather, or a copper button.

Or a brick of solid gold.

I’m afraid I was inattentive with Miss Aneta after they left,

going through the motions of quieting her and feeding her

without my mind on the tasks. I had actually spooned a little of
the rosewater with which I bathed her temples into her mouth

before I noticed what I was doing—some people make cooling
ices of rosewater, in my defense, and it would do her no harm,

but still, it was all I could do to keep my mind closely enough
on my work that it wouldn’t be noticed.

I had seen how to transmute.
I had no idea how to use this. But I knew I had to use it.

The gold bricks would be too much, of course. I couldn’t

smuggle them out without someone seeing, and even if I could,

where would a maid of my station or an old woman of my
grandmother’s get a brick of gold? We’d be arrested for

thieving right away, and the Mistress would be the first to
swear we’d gotten the gold from her household.

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I felt sure she believed that anything Miss Aneta

transmuted was rightfully hers, and that she made the whey-

faced crew pay dearly for it.

On the other hand, I couldn’t let my Gran continue to live

as she was, even in our improved circumstances, if I had the
opportunity to learn how to do magic that could improve our

lot so concretely.

Then there was Miss Aneta’s state. She was clearly

agitated, distressed or uncomfortable or something after each
time she transmuted. Was that because she didn’t like the

people she was doing it for, didn’t like the tasks she was being
asked to do in specific, or because it hurt her, made her

uncomfortable? I couldn’t say that I wouldn’t do it at all if Miss
Aneta didn’t like it, but I’d grown a bit fond of her in the time

I’d worked for her, even though she’d never spoken a word, and
I couldn’t just... couldn’t use her, causing her discomfort

without at least thinking of it. Without taking it into account.

I didn’t sleep well that night, and in the morning, after I’d

gotten some of the thin porridge into Miss Aneta, I made my
first try with a scrap of fabric torn from the inner hem of the

cloth I used to wipe her brow. I positioned her like the whey-
faced people and did what I’d seen the day before.

And there was the snap, the spark I’d felt, and suddenly I

had a heavy, ragged-edged scrap of gold.

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I tucked it away in my shoe and went on with my day. Miss

Aneta, much to my shame and chagrin, did not like it any

better coming from me than from the others. I think there was
a part of me that had hoped she would not object if she knew it

was to make my life better, or if it was someone who cared for
her a bit. It didn’t make my questions about what to do about

Miss Aneta easier, or my day. Dabrowski the housekeeper gave
me extra at lunch, for the “hard week” that she saw we’d been

having, the miss and me, and that made me feel worse.

When I’d got home in the evening and finished with

dinner, I must have shown that there was something bothering
me. Our landlady Mrs. Kaczmarek looked from me to Gran and

back again, smiled with none of her teeth showing, and picked
up her sewing. She found somewhere else to be, I think the

kitchen. Once we were alone, I pulled out the scrap and showed
Gran.

She looked at me hard. “That’s real gold.”
“We made it together, me and Miss Aneta. I learned how

to channel her transmutation.”

Gran sucked her teeth, which were mostly still good,

considering what she’d been through. “Does the Mistress
know?”

I flinched back. “Perish the thought.”
“Does anyone?”

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“No.”
Gran thought about it some more. “Can you only do gold?”

“Gran, I’ve only just done it today.”
“Well, think about what else you can do.”

“I know copper would be more useful. I asked the Mistress

if they’d tried to transmute Miss Aneta’s sick tissue to healthy,

but—”

“Oh, good girl,” said Gran softly. “That’s my Kasia. That’s

how I raised you, poor but honest.”

“The thing is,” I said, swallowing, “I don’t think she likes to

do it. I don’t feel right about it. I don’t feel right about asking
her to do more, and I don’t know that I even feel right about

leaving her there for her mother to make others make her do it,
if it—well, I don’t know if it hurts her. But the rest of the day

she thrashes and kicks and—a person’s a person, Gran,” I said
all in a rush. “Whether they can talk or not. They can let you

know something’s going on. I just wish I knew whether she
didn’t like gold or didn’t like transmuting or—I wish we could

get more out of her.”

“Well, perhaps if you can transmute her to health, it won’t

be a problem any longer.”

“Perhaps,” I said. I didn’t know what to think, how to look

at it. When I had asked the Mistress about Miss Aneta, about
transmuting her to health, I thought all the fine people knew

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how it worked, and here I was, with enough to eat, a glimmer of
thought, on my way to being one of the fine people myself.

Or possibly on my way to throwing it all away.
There was plenty of wood in their fireplaces, plenty of coal

for their stoves, but the house of the fine people, with all its
transmuted gold and steel, still chilled me the next morning. I

brought Gran in to sit by the kitchen fire with a mumbled
excuse. Dabrowski was kind, not the sort to turn away a girl’s

old granny, especially knowing as she did that I wouldn’t ask
for more than a day of it. Especially when the girl’s old granny

set to shelling peas right away without being asked, for no
greater price than the warmth of the fire.

Late in the morning, I had my chance to smuggle Gran up

to help me hold Miss Aneta, and I tried to see my way to

transmuting her sick tissue to healthy.

It was a lot harder than transmuting cloth into gold.

A lot harder.
I was dimly aware that my gran was no longer holding

Miss Aneta, that she had gotten up to tend the fire in the
middle of it, that Miss Aneta had gone still and was no longer

fighting. I didn’t think there was anything ominous with her
stillness. If I had to guess, I’d have said she was curious, but I

knew by then how easy it was, when someone lay so still, to
pretend that your own desires were hers. And I had wanted to

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think that she would like to transmute gold for me, for
someone who had cared for her, and she had not done so.

Perhaps she wasn’t curious at all. Perhaps the flicker I thought
I felt wasn’t her health improving. Perhaps there was nothing.

I was absolutely certain, as morally certain as I’d been of

anything in my life, that I’d heard a negative response from

her.

“Miss Aneta?” I said aloud.

“Is that you?”
“What would you like, Miss?”

“Would you like anything?”
Oh. Oh, sweet saints, I’d done it, I’d done it, I’d done...

The tiniest bit of it imaginable. The very smallest part of

healing that I could think to give her.

“Is it—” I had to get out the question, though I feared the

answer. “Is it that you can only manage to get across yes and

no? Is that all we’ve gotten from what we did together today?”

The Mistress’s voice sounded behind me, harsh as a

parrot. “What is this?”

I jumped to my feet. “Oh, Madam!”

“Who are you, beldame!”
I turned to try to shield my gran and Miss Aneta behind

me at the same time; Gran did her part to help, scrambling to
join me. “This is my gran, Mistress, who came to help out today

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—she won’t be wanting any wages, we just had hope—we just
had hope that we could try to cure a bit of what ails Miss Aneta,

and so—”

“You? You? Could cure my daughter? With what? What

have you given her, goose grease and prayers?”

Gran looked the Mistress dead in the eye. “My goodwill

has never once harmed a mortal soul, be she never so fancy,
nor will it ever. Begging your pardon.”

The Mistress, to her credit, flinched. “Well, girl?”
I saw how it would be, and I saw that I would do myself no

credit if I mentioned that I, too, could use the transmutation
ability. “Miss Aneta—”

And the Mistress did not appear to hear a word.
“Miss Aneta seems entirely calm now,” I said as smoothly

as I could, bobbing a curtsey. “I’ll take my gran down to the
kitchens and get her settled for the night.”

The Mistress frowned. “Have Dabrowski give you the last

of your wages when you’re done settling the young mistress in.

You ought to know by now what’s appropriate, and dragging
your relations in off the street is most certainly not.”

“Please, Mistress,” started Gran, but I held up a hand.
“No, Gran, it’s all right, we’ll find something.”

The Mistress sniffed and left the room.

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If I had a daughter as poorly as Miss Aneta, I’d never leave

her with someone I’d just treated the way the Mistress treated

Gran and me.

If I had a daughter as poorly as Miss Aneta, I’d have at

least tried to get her powers to work on healing her. And we’d
managed something—even yes and no would give us so much

more to go on, and—

I realized, with a start, that I had no intention of leaving

Miss Aneta.

“Gran,” I said very quietly. “I’m going to examine the

backstairs to see how we can get her out, whether we can find a
cart that we can drag without a donkey or something. If we can

wrap her in a rug or, I don’t know, we just have to find a way—”

“No one will ever believe she’s our kin,” said Gran. “Just

look at her, how delicate, how well cared for.”

I hated to admit it, but Gran was right. Even in the months

with enough food and warmth, without the worst of our labors,
our hands and faces proclaimed us to be what we were, a

couple of women the barest step above indigence, and hers...
poor thing, even with her illness, the meanest intellect could

tell she had never picked jute a day in her life, never trodden a
mill, never scrubbed... well, anything.

“In a donkey cart without a donkey, or even with!” Gran

snorted.

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“I’ll have to look,” I said stubbornly. “We’re taking her.”
“Yes. See? See? She says yes.”

“What do you mean, she says yes?”
I took a minute to explain, and once I did, Gran

immediately agreed. “If you’re the one who can hear her, of
course we can’t leave her behind. We’ve gotten somewhere!

And her mother not even willing to try with—”

“Not even willing to try with what?”

And there was Dabrowski the housekeeper in the door

behind us. We stared at her as though we’d been caught

pilfering the silver, which I suppose we had, but worse.

“And don’t try to sneak,” continued Dabrowski, “because

unless I mistake myself rather thoroughly, your grandmother is
saying that you can hear Miss Aneta.”

I stammered incoherently.
“Whom I have known since she was a babe in arms,”

continued Dabrowski, “who used to beg raisins from me, who
ate my honeycakes for her every birthday before this dread

disease felled her, when I was still cook as well as housekeeper.
My young mistress.”

“Oh no,” I said, collapsing on the floor and starting to cry.

“Oh, Miss, oh no.”

“I should tell Dabrowski.”
So I did.

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Dabrowski joined me on the floor crying, but just for a

moment, because Dabrowski and my Gran and me, we were

none of us raised in circumstances were you get to have time
for that, much though you may need it. “Oh, my lass, my lass,”

said Dabrowski, wiping her eyes, and for a minute I thought it
was me she meant, but she smoothed away a nonexistent

strand of hair from Miss Aneta’s brow.

“Well,” she said briskly in another voice completely. “I

have a sister who lives out, we can keep her there a time. We’ll
get her in the marketing cart.”

“You’ll lose your position,” Gran said. “Someone will see

you and tell—they’ll be sure to, they’ll have everything to gain

by it—and you’ll be out in the cold. And we won’t be able to
keep her, the Mistress will just fetch her back.”

I had a thought. “Those fancy faces who come, in their

fancy clothes. Do you know their names, Dabrowski?”

She made a face. “I do, all too well. They present a card

every time they come, though it’s always the same buggers.”

“Do you think they—” My throat stopped.
Gran finished for me. “Do you think they could protect us

from consequences if we rescued the young miss from her
mother? If we promised to transmute things for them from

time to time?”

No. Yes. Long pause. Yes.

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“Miss Aneta thinks it’s a good idea,” I said. It had been a

long time since Dabrowski had been able to hear that and

believe it, know it nearly for certain. She wavered, and then her
face set. She went to get the card.

We found carriage rugs to wrap her in, quickly, quickly.

She almost looked like a carpet, all swaddled like that, but

while I had hoped we would find that the healing was
progressive somehow, that Miss Aneta would get better as we

went, her limbs were as limp as ever, her head as floppy as a
newborn’s.

The upstairs maid gawked at us until Dabrowski snapped

at her, “Your eyes’ll pop out of your head! Unless you want to

lend a hand?” And then she scurried off, no doubt to tell the
Mistress, but not fast enough, because we got Miss Aneta into

the marketing cart and away to Dabrowski’s sister.

I left Gran and Dabrowski in charge of her and went to talk

to the toffs just myself, thinking that if it all went wrong and
they handed me over to the city police it should just be me, that

someone should stay with Miss Aneta, although once I was on
the doorstep I thought we should have sent Dabrowski instead,

since I could communicate with Miss Aneta at least a little, and
Dabrowski looked more respectable. But that’s the sort of thing

you think of later, not in the moment when you’ve got a sick
girl in a marketing cart and a Lady Thisich to meet.

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I did ask for Lady Thisich, but it was her brother I got. He

was dressed all in orchid, but honestly I could not tell whether

he’d been the one all in orchid before or whether they all had
different colors and changed round.

“I cannot think what your business with my sister would

be,” he said, “nor can she, as she does not know how anyone of

your description would have obtained her card. So you may
state it quickly and then—in all likelihood—see yourself out.”

“I am the representative of Miss Aneta Czarnecki,” I said in

my most careful voice. “I am here to discuss you giving her

your protection.”

“You are the... I beg your pardon?”

“I am Miss Czarnecki’s servant, and her voice,” I said. “I

have transmuted some of her sick tissue to healthy. She can

approve and disapprove things through me. She has approved
her removal from her mother’s care to—we hope—yours.”

“What an extraordinary claim. What on earth would make

you think I would believe even the tiniest piece of this?”

I held out what remained of the scrap of gold cloth I’d

transmuted, hope receding. Of course we could show her to

him. But if they tried to take her—if they returned her to the
Mistress and she turned me out or, worse, took me to the city

guards—I tried to keep my voice steady. “You’ll not want to
care for a young woman as sick as she is, and I’m practiced at

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it, me and my Gran and—another of the servants. Easier to
have us than to train another.”

He turned the bit of gold over in his hand, looking at the

fraying as Gran had done. “What’s this cut side here?”

“We’re not rich, sir,” I said. My voice was getting steadier

as I talked. Good. Perhaps this would work after all. “We

needed some to go on.”

“You are resourceful, I see.”

“We try our best for our young mistress.”
“You claim that she can approve and disapprove things,

through you.”

“She can, sir, whether you believe the claim or not.”

He put on a pince-nez and looked at the gold more closely,

then at me. “Young woman, this is the most extraordinary

tale.”

“I have seen you work with Miss Aneta before, sir. I was in

the room when you came, you and your brothers and sister. To
make the gold bricks. We could do that for you, Miss Aneta and

me. When she is ready.”

The pince-nez was not entirely an affectation, but I saw

that Lord Thisich was using it and the orchid clothing to make
people underestimate him. “And we would provide...?”

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“A little house, sir. For Miss Aneta and the three of us. And

protection from her mother. We want—” I took a deep breath.

“I want to try to continue to heal her.”

“I don’t want you to.”

There it was on the table. I thought he might not. “That’s

very cruel of you, sir.”

“No, it’s very sensible. If Miss Czarnecki is well, she is a

free woman and may transmute what she pleases. As ill as she

is, she is dependent on those who support her, who keep her
alive, and must transmute as they please. I am perfectly willing

to take that role over from her mother. But you must not try to
heal her any further.”

“Certainly not, sir,” I said, without batting an eye. “If you

don’t wish it, I—I have been poor, sir. If we have a house to live

in, my gran and me, and protection, well... Miss Aneta can’t
very well heal herself, sir, and we’ll take care of her.”

He relaxed. “Sensible girl, you’re a credit to your mistress.

We’ll get you some better things.”

Are they stupid, the rich? Does the money stuff itself in

their ears and tie a blindfold over their eyes? Two days in the

workhouse, two days, and you learn to say, “No, master, you
didn’t give me the crust for my gran yet,” as smooth as the

butter you never see any more. If he’d had more magic,
perhaps he could have bound my word. If I’d had more money,

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he’d have known he had to try. But I stood there, a servant girl
with the biggest wealth of the city about to drop in his lap, and

he decided to let me hand it to him.

We would reward him for that. But not nearly so richly as

we would have if he had agreed to let us work freely to heal
Miss Aneta. We would remember.

It was late into the evening when they had us settled into

the little cottage on their estate, sending down a bit of the

servants’ dinner for the three of us and provisions for us to
cook up for ourselves for the next day.

“I suppose I’d best make Miss Aneta’s gruel,” said

Dabrowski. “I’ve instructed new cooks in it enough.”

No no no no no no.
“She doesn’t want it,” I said.

“Lovey, you must eat something,” said Dabrowski, and I

noticed that the longer we were together, the more we sounded

like grandmother and mother and two daughters.

“I think she just doesn’t want the gruel,” I said. “I think

she doesn’t like it.”

“I can do up an egg broth,” said Gran, inspecting the

provisions. “It’ll work a treat. Always did my littles.”

“She’d like that.” I thought of the hot apple I’d sliced, that

first day of work, and how good it was to be able to say for
yourself what you would or would not do, where you would or

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would not go. The Mistress and the Lord and all of them, oh,
we would make things change, Miss Aneta and me. We would

transmute the world for them all, but I did not think they
would like what we would change it into.

Read Comments on this Story

on the BCS Website

Marissa Lingen lives in the Minneapolis area with two large
men and one small dog. Her work has appeared in Tor.com,

Lightspeed, Apex, and multiple times previously in Beneath
Ceaseless Skies, among others.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #162

GOATSKIN

by K.C. Norton

I had heard, of course, that the Lady Uduru was the most

beautiful woman in the world. I was not impressed. Beauty
doesn’t matter much to a goatskin girl—beauty brings nothing

but trouble, usually from the men who are always talking about
it.

But kneeling before the Lady Uduru’s chair, I could see the

truth for myself. She was clothed in silk and cotton whiter than

new goat’s milk. The cloth had been beaten to paper-thinness
so that the outline of her body sloped beneath it like a shady

oasis in dry-season sun. Her smooth skin was the color of a
starless night, her eyes agate-dark. Her hair was knotted so

that the ends rose in tufts above a nest of braids, the roots
painted red with clay slip.

She is too beautiful to be human, I thought. She does not

look real. Don’t think that I meant this as a compliment, or as

an insult. The surface of things isn’t what matters, as every
goatskin girl knows.

When the Lady Uduru spoke, even her voice was

otherworldly. It seemed to rise out of the Earth beneath her,

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like a tree taking root. “Do you have a name?” The words
reverberated in my chest the way drum-beats do.

“I am called Shanzi,” I told her. My own voice sounded

hollow and nasal in the wake of the Lady Uduru’s.

“What did you cost?”
I peered up into her face for clues; it was blank as a mask.

“Three buffalo,” I answered, “and some lentils, and some
yams.”

“How many yams?” The Lady Uduru’s neck was so long

and straight. Egrets had necks like that—and Egrets did not

smile, either.

“I did not count.”

“Then how do you know what you are worth?”
I tilted my head, else I should have shaken it. “I do not

know, Mistress. But I know I am worth the same as I was
before the yams and the lentils and the cattle changed hands.”

Ah, I thought, there is something human in there, because

a emotion tugged at the Lady’s broad, perfect mouth before she

spoke again. “You will stay with me, Shanzi,” she told me. “And
what I tell you to do, you will do.”

Of course I would—but what, I wondered, did the most

beautiful woman in the world want with a two-skinned girl?

* * *

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Before you ask, no, it did not trouble me to have been

either bought or sold. My Mother and Father, and little Ange

and Nasif, had more to eat, and I myself had a softer bed and
better meals than in my old life. What other arrangement

would have gotten us all of that? Marriage, perhaps, but most
men do not want a wife who is only human when she chooses

to be.

The Lady Uduru was older than me by eight rainy seasons.

She spoke twelve languages and read books—real books,
sometimes I could hardly believe her wealth!—and when

emissaries visited town, it was always the Lady Uduru who
served as hostess.

The Lady Uduru created nothing with her hands, except

occasional letters that I could not read. She did not weave or

hunt.

“Sit with me,” she commanded, when rich foreigners came

to dinner. She seemed to always be sitting. “Stay beside me,
and listen.”

Which after all was an easy job. So why complain? At those

dinners, I was obedient and therefore silent, because there

were always good things to eat.

* * *

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The moon had poured itself into darkness and then refilled

before I learned that the Lady Uduru did know how to make

things with her own hands after all.

“We are going out today,” she announced on rising from

her bed, and I trailed after her like a tame dog.

Perhaps you have not spent much time in the grasslands—

then, let me tell you what it looks like: it is broad, and flat, and
if you do not know how to see, it looks sickly most of the year.

If you have clever eyes, though, you can see that the place is
sleeping. Seeds curl up under the dust, and frogs bury

themselves in the mud beneath pools before the pools go dry,
and all the animals hide beneath stones, or lie panting in the

dirt as if the life is fading from them.

The Lady Uduru went out alone, except for me. She rode a

white buffalo whose sides were streaked with dry-season dust. I
trotted behind her as a girl.

As soon as we left town, a white sheet of cloud unfolded

itself just above us. The Lady Uduru looked up and nodded, but

she did not say anything to explain.

We went a long ways, until the houses were all far behind

us, and that cloud sat fat and heavy above, spreading and
puffing itself up, swelling with rain that did not fall. Out among

the boababs, she bade her buffalo stop—he was a very obedient
animal—and she left him in my care.

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“Wait here for me, Shanzi,” she commanded in her earth-

and-heaven voice, and I nodded but promised nothing.

So she left me there, and the moment she was out of sight I

tied the buffalo’s rope to one of the trees and slipped on my

goatskin.

Now, the goatskin is a slippery thing, and it lets you make

choices. It’s magic so I can’t explain to you how it works
exactly, because you’re either born knowing or you aren’t. I

was, and so when I slipped my goatskin on I told it, You’d best
make me into a snake this time, old skin! because a snake

could slip through the grass and over stones without being
seen. Whenever I slip on my goatskin, there is always a kind of

bonecrackle, and a squeezing, and a bloom of confusion, but
after the first few times you learn to expect the feeling and to

ignore the pain.

When I unwound myself, I was a puff adder—big and

sharp-toothed and poisonous, the safest things to be when
you’re a girl on her own. I slid off sideways in the earth, so as

not to startle the buffalo.

The Lady Uduru was out in the open. She looked around

carefully to see who was watching, but she did not spy me in
my new body. Satisfied, she lifted up her hands—lovely, soft,

idle hands which so often went to waste. Her hands tightened

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to fists, and she yanked down, like she was pulling something
out of that cloud.

What came out was rain.
It did not come slow, either. It came suddenly and in fat

ripe drops sweet as fruit and cold as stars. Blue fire cracked out
of that cloud, and it was bright and angry and it bit. I’d never

seen lightening like that before, not so focused on one thing:
every time it struck, it struck the Lady Uduru.

All around us, the world woke up. My snake-tongue could

smell all the seeds poking out their shoots, and all the frogs

under the earth began to shudder to life. That made my
stomach rumble, though I don’t care for frogs in my girlskin.

Pools and ponds and watering holes began to fill, and still the
water came. I slid up onto a rock to watch—the Lady Uduru’s

lips grew tight and thin, and the fine red clay washed out of her
ruined hair, staining her cheeks and forehead. The muscles in

her neck strained; her jaw was set. This was hard work, anyone
could see that.

After a while I slid back toward the tree where the buffalo

waited. Alright, old skin, change me back, and—with a crunch

and a blot of red-black that left my head aching—there was a
girl-me where the snake-me had been. Things feel different in

different bodies, so I couldn’t smell the frogs anymore, but I

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could feel the fat raindrops, and they were warm and pleasant
on my girlskin.

After a long time, I can’t guess how long but I was I

terrifically hungry and had been for ages, the Lady Uduru

returned at last.

She did not look like herself. Some of the light was gone

out of her, and she was tired and cranky and very human.

I learned one thing about the Lady Uduru that day: she

was useful. The most useful of anyone in our city, I think.

Funny, how no one ever talked about it.

* * *

I can see from your face that you are very confused. Don’t

they have goatskin girls where you’re from?

No, the goatskin isn’t an actual skin, like a pelt or a shirt.

It’s a thing you’re born with. It’s another way of existing. It
means you can’t understand people, most of the time, because

how can they stand to wear the one same skin forever and
ever?

Why do they call it a goatskin, when you can become

anything? Because girls who are born with it have one leg that

folds back, like a goat’s does, and that leg ends with a goat’s
hoof.

See? On me, it is my right leg. No need to gape. It is

perfectly natural.

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* * *

Two seasons after I came to live with the Lady Uduru, a

visitor arrived from the North. I did not quite understand
where exactly he lived, or how far North it was.

Ah. Yes. I see that you already know who I mean.
His hair was as dark as anybody’s but finer, very straight

and soft. His eyes were strange, too, light brown and smiling—
but insincere. And yes, his skin was lighter, but not so light as

all that.

In his own way, he was as appealing to the eye as the Lady

Uduru herself.

I sat at the table with them and poured their coffee while

they ate dates and honeycomb and thin slices of meat.

“I have heard I great deal about you,” said the man, who

introduced himself to us as Master Akiiki. “The rumors, it
seems, are true.” And he dipped his head and smiled. His smile

showed more teeth than was polite—he reminded me of a
nervous baboon.

“There are always rumors,” said the Lady Uduru, sipping

her coffee. I was beginning to suspect that she was tired of all

the nonsense about her looks, but there was so much magic in
her that she couldn’t help what everyone thought. People are

drawn to magic like hyenas to a young wildebeest. It can be
dangerous.

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“How fortunate,” said Master Akiiki. “They are right about

your eyes—storm black, they say.”

The Lady Uduru’s wide lips thinned. “How kind of you.”
He went on to praise each and every feature of her face,

her figure, her household. I let my mind wander—sometimes
when I do that, I can see under the skin of things, into their

meat and muscle. It’s not magic, exactly, but a by-product of
the magic. That is a talent you can learn.

The thing I saw inside of Master Akiiki was a sharp dark

shadow like a wasp in its nest. It made my mouth taste sour, it

made the toes of my left foot curl.

* * *

I kept my eyes open that night; I snuck as much coffee as I

could drink before bedtime, though it had long gone cold, so

that I could watch out for the Lady Uduru. I did not like that
Akiiki, did not trust him by half.

Thusly, while the Lady Uduru was roaming deep though

comfortable dreams, I was awake to hear the sounds of two

people approaching. He knew the rumors, you see, rumors I
had not even heard, about what the Lady Uduru could do.

Water is valuable everywhere.

Yes, there is danger in good magic. Fortunately the danger

runs both ways. I pulled my goatskin on at once—back into my

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puff-adder shape, the last one I’d worn—and slid into the Lady
Uduru’s bed.

Hardly a moment later, two men, Akiiki and a servant of

his, snuck into the room. Akiiki covered the Lady Uduru’s

mouth at once, to stop her screaming, while the other man tied
her up. I hissed very softly at them, but they did not hear. The

Lady Uduru struggled, but as I have said she spent most of her
time sitting and writing letters and entertaining, and she was

not very strong. When they were done they shoved a rag in her
mouth so that she could not scream.

It was a rather dirty rag. I did not think she would care for

that at all.

Finally, they wrapped her in her blankets and carried her

away. They did not know it, but they carried me as well. Had I

been a real puff adder, things would have gone much worse all
around.

* * *

It was obvious to me that the Lady Uduru’s powers did not

extend much beyond storms. When the men tossed her in a
cage, and tossed that cage into an ox-cart, she lay there very

hopelessly and shuddered. To her credit, she did not cry—but if
it had been me, I would have turned into a cobra and avoided

the whole problem.

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But she was not like me. Both of the Lady Uduru’s feet

were shapely and perfect. Poor thing!

When we were alone, and I was sure Akiiki and his man

would not come back, I slithered out of my hiding place and

wound my way around her. I felt her breathing stop and her
heartbeat stutter when she saw me, but she did not cry out.

“Don’t worry, Mistress,” I told her, “it is only Shanzi.” Alas,

she did not understand me.

With a sigh, I slid off to the very cornermost edge of her

cage and pulled my girlskin on. I heard the breath wheeze out

of her lungs, and the blood left her face to that she looked
pallid and grey. I’m told the transformation is difficult to

witness; I myself have never seen it done.

“It is only Shanzi,” I said again, in a hoarse whisper. This

time she nodded.

I remembered the cloth in her mouth, and pulled it out

very gently. My fingers brushed her teeth, and for a moment I
felt something like embarrassment. She was certainly not used

to people seeing her like this.

The cart hit a stone, and our teeth rattled. I could smell her

fear, the sharp and bitter tang of nervous sweat, and it roiled
my stomach.

“We’ll get you out of here,” I promised, cool as well-water.

I, of course, could come and go as it pleased me.

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“But how?” she asked.
I shrugged. She was the clever one, with so many

languages and letters. Surely she could devise some plan.

She chewed her lip, a lip that was chapped with thirst. She

is not so old, I thought. “You could put on a skin to look like
me,” she suggested. “Then I could escape, and when I get free

of them you could turn back into an adder and slip away, too.
Perhaps we could trick them somehow, when they saw there

were two of us?”

“It hardly matters,” I said. “I have never tried to wear

another girlskin, but even if I could we’d be easily told apart,”
and I showed her my leg.

Oh, yes. I see your confusion. We’ll come around to that.
She nodded. “But you can turn into a beast? Any kind of

beast?”

I squinted at her. I had not seen this side of her before, the

curious part. She had never shown much interest in other
people; but perhaps that was part of her performance as the

world’s most beautiful woman. For the first time I saw her as a
person who might well be my friend.

But she would have to be free first.
“Let me try something,” I suggested, and slid into my

goatskin and became a mouse. I winked at her—although I
doubt she could see it—and skittered out into the front of the

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wagon, down into the ropes that held the ox to the cart. Akiiki
and his man were talking in a language I did not know, but it

sounded rather as if they were discussing their impending
fortunes. Whether they meant to sell the Lady Uduru off, or

rent out her magic, I did not know and did not care. I wanted
only to put a stop to it.

It is one thing, you see, to be sold to a reasonable mistress

who puts good food in your belly, and gives you a clean bed to

sleep in, and keeps things interesting for you. It is another
thing to be stolen for someone else’s profit.

I bit into the ox’s ropes one by one. I nibbled and chewed

ever so carefully, and I was thorough, although every moment

carried us farther from home and closer to wherever Akiiki was
taking us. It doesn’t do to be hurried and careless. This is

another thing we goatskins know.

When my work was done, I dropped off of the cart and

rushed away into the grass, to a place where I could change
skins without being seen. I tugged at my goatskin, thinking,

What about a sleek, lean lion, wouldn’t that be a nice shape,
oh flesh of mine? And a moment later, I was.

I liked being a lion. I liked it tremendously.
I followed that cart on my new lion-limbs. I could be a lion

forever and be content with that, I think. But I had work to do,
and I did not enjoy it as much as I might have.

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The ox pulling that cart smelled sweet, as sweet as it would

to my girlskin if it were roasting on a spit. I crouched down and

snuck upwind of the ox. No self-respecting lion would ever do
that, because it would frighten the ox into a frenzy—but this

was my desire exactly.

The beast began to shuffle in its traces. “Hurry up, you

dumb thing!” demanded Akiiki, whipping it mercilessly, but
the ox was frightened of me more than it was frightened of an

old whip.

When the ox’s eyes began to roll in its head, and Akiiki was

blue in the face from all his yelling, I sprung up out of the grass
and roared, charging the cart. The ox screamed and bolted

away, as fast as it could. The cart bounced over rocks and
snagged on shrubs, and at last the ropes broke and the ox

hurried on but the cart did not. Akiiki’s man fumbled with his
spear, but I was a long way off by then. I intend never to be

gored!

Then, when I was out of sight a ways, I tugged myself into

a bird skin and flew back.

Circling the cart, I watched Akiiki and his man pull the

Lady Uduru from her cage and pack up what supplies they
could. I did not have to understand their language to guess the

meaning of their words—swearing sounds alike in every
tongue.

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“Shoo, buzzard!” cried Akiiki, waving his spear at me.
The Lady Uduru smiled up; she looked battered and

disheveled from the cart ride, but pleased.

There, I thought, wheeling away. That will slow them

down for a bit. But men like Akiiki sleep on the skins of lions.
He was not afraid of me, and I would not surprise him again.

Not in that skin, anyway.

* * *

I followed them for a long ways but saw no other

opportunity to strike. I suppose I might have turned into a

scorpion, or an asp, and ended it, but I do not like to use my
magic for killing. In my girlskin, I hunt and defend myself like

anyone, but magic is subtle, and its patrons must be subtler. So
I observed.

They were kind enough to the Lady Uduru—had they laid a

hand on her, I would have killed them gladly.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked, in between dainty

sips of water. In the old days I would have rolled my eyes, but I

was beginning to see how her body was a kind of weapon, and
how she could wield it as cleverly as I could a knife.

“To my brother,” said Akiiki. “You will marry him, and you

will bring rain in every season.”

“Will I?” asked the Lady Uduru. The way she said it

answered clearly, No I won’t.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #162

“You will,” said Akiiki. “My brother will see to it.”
The Lady Uduru was so bold as to laugh in his face. Oh, I

loved her nearly as much as I had loved my lion body.

Alas, Akiiki and his man were careful. They did not let her

out of their sight. They took turns standing guard that night,
and while the Lady slept a little ways off, and had her privacy,

she had no chance to escape.

I know. I kept watch all night.

* * *

They rose early the next day to continue their march.

“This will be a very long trip on foot, I think,” said the

Lady Uduru mildly, stopping to shake dust out of her shoe—it

was a man’s pair, salvaged from the ruined cart.

But Akiiki’s man shook his head. “We will take a ship this

evening. We would have arrived last night, if it weren’t for that
cursed lion...”

The Lady Uduru cast her shoulder a frightened glace; I was

riding in the folds of her dress, back in my little mouse-skin.

That was no good! We’d have to escape before we reached the
boat. Even if anyone came after us, and if they knew somehow

which direction we’d been taken, they’d never find us upriver.

Us—well, one thing was sure: they would not come looking

for me.

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I tugged gently at my goatskin, just to see if it would be

possible to put on an Uduru-girlskin if it came to that. The

goatskin pulled back; it did not like that shape. My goatskin
might be flexible, but my girlskin was unique.

* * *

The main thing to do was buy us more time, and by the

time the Lady Uduru and her captors had taken their morning
break for water, I had an idea. I folded myself into a golden

sparrow when the men weren’t looking and flew off, scanning
the ground. I did not have to go far to find what I was looking

for: a sandy red hill built up against the side of an old tree.

A siafu anthill.

Surely even you know that the jaws of the siafu can carve

flesh, and that when the siafu travel in their driving line,

anything in their path will be eaten to the bone. It was not the
season for lines to form, but I could not wait for the right time.

Landing safely in the tree, I tugged myself into the skin of

a siafu. It was the smallest skin I’ve ever worn, and I was half-

afraid I’d burst out of it again, but my goatskin held as I
entered the anthill.

Ant brains are not like human brains; you have only to

think something, and nudge the fellow nearest you, and he’s

thinking it too. The fellow beside him knows it in a moment,
and then... suddenly, the whole anthill knows, fast as thought.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #162

It’s a lovely way of communicating, when you aren’t trying to
trick someone into doing something that isn’t their business.

So I didn’t let myself think about why I was there. I only

thought what I wanted. Time to go time to go it’s the time now

hurry hurry, I thought to them. Ants, like all other creatures,
love to be powerful, and so stirring them against their natures

was not as hard as it might have been. It helped, I’m sure, that I
was a rare female in a Queen’s harem.

The ants came with me in a flood; I could lead them by

little more than thinking, and even in an ant skin my will was

stronger than theirs. We were not swift, but we did not have to
be. We only had to cut off Akiiki’s progress. Once they got

going, they were impossible to stop.

When Akiiki reached our drive, fifty thousand strong,

flowing like a deadly tributary through the sand, he cried out in
frustration. “We’ll go around,” he snarled, and the three

humans followed the ants upstream, hoping to find the far end
and circle around.

The Lady Uduru winked at a hyena lying in the shade of a

nearby baobab. Her magic must have been getting better,

because she was right: it was me.

* * *

Slow them down it did—but my tricks did not stop them,

and in spite of everything they reached the river that night.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #162

There was a small port along the water, only an abandoned
house and a creaky dock. A boat too fine for that river-harbor

was moored in the black water.

“The boat will have to wait for morning,” Akiiki growled.

His manners became sourer, and his looks less pleasing to the
eye, with every passing moment. I would have been proud of

my work, except that the Lady was not yet free.

Three men were waiting in the little house; all Akiiki’s

men, ready to sail at sunrise. There was no one else; and no one
else would come.

“It is only a day by boat to his brother’s town,” moaned the

Lady Uduru when I snuck into her private room. “What shall

we do? I want to go home.”

My family was better off for having sold me into the Lady

Uduru’s service. But if there was a drought, their new fortune
would dwindle to nothing in a single year.

The land is kind to us when it wants to be, but sometimes

it forgets. My family was better off if the Lady Uduru was safe

in her fine house, with her fine books, wielding her cold
manners in one fist and her magic in the other.

“Hold out your hands,” I told her. She did, and I laid mine

atop hers so that our palms touched. Very, very gently, I tugged

at the edge of my girlskin.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #162

“Oh!” cried the Lady Uduru, yanking her hands away from

me as though I was on fire. “What is that?”

“I have a solution,” I told her. “I think I can look like you.

But I think... I think we will have to exchange girlskins.”

She gaped at me, and I smiled at her purely human

expression.

“I will become you,” I explained. “That is, I shall look just

like you. But when I wear the goatskin, I am still myself inside

—so I believe that if we do this, I shall still be me, and you will
still have your magic, and you will be able escape, only...”

“Only I shall look like you.” The Lady Uduru said this

neutrally, but I noticed the way her eyes roamed over me, over

my face and arms and down to my feet. I could feel the blood
rising in my neck and face. At last she said, “I am older than

you are.”

“Then clearly you will get the better bargain in this trade,”

I snapped.

She laughed at me, loud and low in that fine deep-rooted

voice, and I could not guess what her captors would be thinking
if they heard her. “Then try.” She held her hands out to me, and

I placed my palms on hers and changed my girlskin for the first
time.

* * *

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #162

Every animal is different on the inside. I was long used to

the shape of new bodies, but this was something else, because

for all my changing, the girlskin was the only constant shape I
knew.

It was strange, too, to see Shanzi sitting across from me,

staring at her hands in wonder, then staring at me in awe.

I recognized her expression. It was the same one I had

when I looked on her for the first time.

“Well,” I said, “it worked.”
Shanzi bent forward to examine me more closely. “This is

very strange,” she murmured. “I don’t know if I like it.” Then
her hands found her face and traced the shape of my nose and

my lips—No, don’t forget, her lips now—and her ordinary face
was overtaken by a smile. “No. I am certain. I do like it.”

Even in her new body, she was more radiant than I had

been, and so I was quite sure that she had taken her magic with

her, and that I had kept mine.

“You can’t turn into a mouse and sneak out,” I told her.

“You’ll have to find another way.”

“I can go by the door,” she teased, rising on shaky legs—

but I shook my head.

“If they catch you, that will be the end of it.”

“Then we will need a distraction,” she said with relish. “I

have just the thing. Oh, and Shanzi?”

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #162

I nodded.
“However many yams I paid for you, you were worth it.”

Her grin sat strangely on my face, but I did not dislike it.

Shanzi raised her hands above her head, just as she had

done in the grasslands. For a moment nothing happened—was
the magic gone?—but then the air quivered with static, and a

drumming of thunder shook the walls, and then, wonder of
wonders, a bolt of that merciless blue lightening split the roof

open, and then there was another, and another, reducing the
room to rubble and letting the rain in.

The first thing Akiiki thought of, of course, was his prize,

and he was on me as soon as he could push through the rubble.

“I don’t know your game,” he snarled, grabbing my arm,

though clearly too afraid of me to hurt me, “but it won’t help!

You’re still my prisoner.”

“Yes,” I said, watching the faint outline of Shanzi

disappear forever into the rain, “I am.”

“I won’t take my eye off you again until you are safely in

my brother’s house!”

On he raged, but I was smiling to myself, because when

Shanzi ran off into the night she had two ordinary feet, and by
wiggling all my toes I had discovered that no matter who I

appeared to be, I would always be a goatskin girl.

* * *

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #162

The rest you know. Your brother brought me here, and

true to his word he has not let me out of his sight for a moment.

But now it is just the two of us, and instead of the most
desirable woman in the world with her life-giving storm magic,

you have got me.

One of two things will happen now. I will turn into an

adder, and either you will let me go because I am worthless to
you, or you will try to kill me for my impudence. If it comes to

that, we will see who strikes first. I do not like to kill with my
magic, as I said, but I will defend my life in any skin.

After that? When I reach the open desert, I will tug myself

into a lion skin, and I will leave you behind.

Yes. It is possible that I will return the Lady Uduru to her

own skin, and take Shanzi back.

It is possible. But it is not the only choice a girl with my

magic might make.

Read Comments on this Story

on the BCS Website

K.C. Norton’s work can be found at Daily Science Fiction,
Flash Fiction Online, and Writers of the Future, among other

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #162

venues. She lives in the least-rural part of rural Pennsylvania
with a small cow-spotted dog. She can be found at

facebook.com/greekpunk

, and can be tweeted @kc_norton if

the urge should strike.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #162

COVER ART

“Ancient Threshold,” by Sam Burley

Sam Burley is a matte painter turned illustrator and is
believed to currently reside on the continent of North

America. Eye-witness reports describe him as a tall, stick-like,
camera-wielding figure staring at the sky or driving around

aimlessly with his dog named Rygel. On rare occasions he has
been glimpsed careening through the air by any of several

flimsy and horribly unnatural means of flight, apparently
laughing. If seen, approach with caution… and preferably

root beer. View more of his work online at

samburleystudio.com

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #162

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

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